Intermittent... new build

[vonagio]

Asus Z370-A

2x 4GB Crucial Ballistix DDR4 2400

i5-8600K

GT 8800GT 1GB

500W Antec PSU

Zalman something-big cooler

Kingston SSD

 

I took the PSU and GPU from my ancient computer, installed it all, it ran on first boot and ran windows & games fine.

Stood the case up, and it no longer posted, showing a sequence of error lights - CPU red, RAM orange, VGA white...

Tinkered with it a bit, now it's all out of the case again, and sometimes posts fine and gets to windows, fully installed, with 1 stick in random slot, GPU or iGPU, complete with random holds of power and MemOK buttons... Now I'm really at a loose end....

 

Doesn't help I don't really know what the error light sequence means!

 

Thanks,

 

[vonagio]

It looks like I may have incompatible RAM perhaps... I read somewhere that the light combinations I see is the mobo trying out different ram profiles. This could make sense as every time it eventually posts it tells me to go into the bios and set RAM parameters, sometimes it gets the right frequency, other times it starts with 2133MHz rather than 2400....

I checked the Asus site of working RAM and my model doesn't appear, though several similar models do... The timing matches, I don't know much about RAM - should an untested/unapproved model even with the same timing and frequency be a deal-breaker for the mobo?!

 

Any other ideas?!

[jbuck]

Yes, you need to update your psu.   The updated cpus have different requirements and using psu may not start up consistently using one.   I would upgrade that

before doing anything else.  When you get psu get psu testing tool, they are handy for trouble shooting.